The Future Approaching

I have, this morning, received in my email an offer of a job overseas.

It's not the one in Singapore as that process seems to have ground to a halt. It has however completely vindicated my oft repeated assertion that it would take me less than a fortnight to get a job in China. This job, which is in China, I first applied for on Tuesday morning. Today it's Friday and I have a copy of the contract in my hand awaiting my perusal and my signature.

Looks as if the future is approaching.

Headline of the year?

In yesterday's Metro.

Medicine made me into cross-dressing sex-mad gambler


Gets my vote for headline of the year.

Headline Part 3

It seems that the police have developed a liking for human flesh in the latest episode of this news story.

CANNIBAL COPS FIND KILLER'S KIT

Headline Part 2

And today's headline in the same newspaper is the understated

I SAW CROSSBOW CANNIBAL EAT LIVE RAT

Just gotta love the journalistic restraint.

Am I the only one actually listening?

I've just heard a newsreader on television say that this morning Gordon Brown effectively ruled out an early general election when he said this morning that there will be a Labour Budget in March. The trouble is that that's not what he said. I know it because I watched the program where he was interviewed and the people writing the news broadcast know it too because they followed up by showing the relevant question and answer from the interview.
He was asked "Will there be a Labour Budget [in March]?" and he answered "There will be a budget if the time is right."

This is, as the more astute will notice, a non-answer because the person who decides if the time is right is Gordon Brown and so the answer is the equivalent of "there will be a budget if I say so and won't be a budget if I don't say so". It's about as non as a non-answer can get and I was baffled at the time as to why the interviewer didn't pick it up. I am equally baffled now as to how the interpretation on the news can be drawn from the actual words.

Don't you just love political doublespeak?

Er... run that past me again

Just heard on the news, in a report about two patients who have a Tamiflu resistant strain of Swine Flu:

"It is believed they caught the virus from each other."

How is that possible?

An odd thing to say

John Moffat has brought to my attention an odd phrasing in the Guardian's reporting of the tragic death of PC Barker in the recent flooding in Cumbria. The police officer was swept away as he tried to direct traffic away from a dangerous bridge. According to the Guardian, "The policeman's body, still in uniform, was found washed up on a beach ."
Does the use of "still in uniform" strike anyone apart from us as being a little odd. Why would the body be anything but "still in uniform"? Would we expect the uniform to have washed away? Would we have expected an on duty officer to be not in uniform? Why mention the uniform at all?

It seems to me, as it did to John, to be a strange thing to say.

Good doggie

I love this picture of Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. It says so much. The puppy-dog, big-eyed, lapping-tongue of Gordon Brown is the perfect evocation of an eager-to-please ,Golden Labrador while the hand-on-the shoulder, look-what's-happening-over-there of Barack Obama is the perfect portrait of a distracted, not-really-paying-attention-but-having-to-acknowledge-the-puppy, dog owner.